Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

§

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Truth
& Belief

1864

Words
are sounds to represent something that contains matter (or form), or
they are applied to some imaginary thing. Now the word “truth” is
applied to either of these two ideas. So when a person says a thing
is so-and-so, if we believe it, this is a truth. Now separate those
things that we can't see clearly from those things that are in the
dark, and then apply the word “truth” to such as have a
substance, according to man's belief, and those that have no
substance, only as a belief; and then you will know what is truth and
what is not.

For
instance, what you know, you are not a part of, but it is yourself.
The thing known is something - not of you, but outside. For instance,
if I say to you, “Did you ever see a house?” Now you see, you are
not part of the house, but outside of it. But if I ask you if you
ever saw a man come to you after he is dead, according to your
belief, you will say, “No.” But if I ask you if you believe he
has a spirit, you say, “I believe he has.” Now don't you see this
belief contains no substance; only a shadow - and it requires
darkness to produce it.

So
ignorance is darkness, and truth is light. So as you come to the
light (or science), the spirit (or belief) (or darkness) will vanish;
for there is no substance in it. So every word is nothing, of itself,
till it is attached to some idea that contains a substance. So to
separate the truth from error is to correct the error that makes the
trouble called “sickness.”

Now
I class all the troubles of man among those truths, based on a false
mode of reasoning; for when a person knows
a thing, his opinion ceases, and he comes out of the dark and stands
in the light. So everything we don't know beyond a doubt has a shade
of darkness.

For
instance, if I ask you if you can see the figure five, you will see
it plain in your mind; but if I ask you if you see the answer to 75
added to 5, 13, 19, 6, 31, 100, 99 and 75 - now you are in the dark,
and you see no answer, till after you add them up in your wisdom and
set them down in the mind. Then your wisdom can see the answer in the
mind. But before this, there must be a chemical process to develop
the mind, so the answer would come out; and when it is out, the
opinion is gone, and you stand outside, looking at the answer.

So
with disease; the seeds of opinion are sown in the mind from a belief
of man; for as I have said, mind is matter and governed by his
belief, which is matter; and the wisdom is also matter - and is all a
part of the same. And the truth destroys both. So when the world gets
wise enough to learn that what cannot be seen outside of the man is
nothing, if the thing seen is the effect - then it is not certain
that it exists at all.

For
instance, all diseases - like religious opinions - admit something
that you cannot see. This is all as far as man's health and happiness
is concerned; for if he admits it as a truth, he certainly is liable
to create the misery of his folly. For instance, heathen
superstition is now believed to be all fiction, or nearly so; even
the city of Troy, the siege of Babylon and lots of others. We get as
good and correct an account of them as we do of London - and why
should we not believe one, as well as the other? Just because we know
persons that have told us that London exists. But no one who had
never been to London, but was transferred to London in his sleep and
then awakened, dare risk his life and wisdom to say that he knew it
was London. Therefore, if he was as sure as he could be, without
asking, when he was told that it was London - this would not make him
any more sure. After getting satisfied, his belief is gone, and he
stands outside in his wisdom.

So
it is with all these old fables. They are accounts of all kinds of
diseases and how the people died - and the symptoms have been handed
down to this day. The plague of Egypt is one, although all the
history is based on a fabulous account of what never had an
existence. Yet we hear of this old disease being in existence. So all
this goes to show that whatever has been handed down for history and
been believed is as catching as the evils that are invented by the
medical faculty of our days. Modern fables (or stories) are as
popular as the fables of the ancients. Neither have an existence
outside of the mind.